An Unexpected Outing (3)
Grainstone Village.
Two hours of hard riding north of the Blackwood territory, and when we finally reached our destination, I turned my head toward Ethan in the seat behind me.
"We've arr… oof, arrived…, Master Ethan…."
"…Mm."
He met my eyes for a single beat, then turned his head away with a strangely flushed face.
Considering everything that had happened atop the horse on the way here, that reaction was more than understandable.
All through the ride from the Blackwood territory, Ethan's hands kept brushing against or outright grabbing my chest, and so the atmosphere had turned awkward more than once even mid-gallop.
Well, it was an unavoidable consequence of the situation — me riding in front, Ethan clinging to my back.
A horse is, by nature, a means of transport where you have to move your hips in rhythm with the animal's gait, and Ethan, unlike me, apparently wasn't all that used to matching someone else's movements.
So in the process, his whole body jolting up and down and his hands sliding upward past my waist was simply an inevitability.
And to begin with, Lilith's chest, thanks to its sheer size, tended to bounce a bit excessively during vigorous movement — which meant that as he gripped my waist, my chest would keep colliding with Ethan's hands.
On top of that, my own chest had been jouncing a bit too much throughout the ride, leaving me with a strangely throbbing ache around my ribs.
Maybe I should wrap myself in some kind of compression cloth.
When I'd learned to ride from Dietmeier last year, I'd changed into proper riding gear before mounting, so I'd never experienced anything like this.
Rushing the departure and mounting the horse in my maid uniform had clearly been a mistake.
I hadn't expected it to hurt quite this much, either.
…On the way back to the Blackwood territory, maybe I should just ask Ethan to hold on with his hands instead.
We'd already been groped any number of times on the way here, with neither of us willing or able to help it.
And if the groping was going to happen anyway and just make things awkward, wouldn't it be simpler to tell Ethan from the start to grab my chest and hold on tight?
Since I'd be the one riding and absorbing the up-and-down motion, it would hurt less than it did now, and Ethan could fix his body far more stably than by clinging to my waist….
No. No. What the hell kind of insane thought is that?
Shaking my head, I hurriedly shook off the deranged idea that had flashed through my mind.
However much it hurt from the jostling, there was no way on earth I could ask Ethan to hold my chest for the entire ride.
Lately, for some reason I couldn't fathom, my senses kept going slack whenever Ethan was involved. I needed to get a grip.
Ethan had groped my chest well over a dozen times by now, but me asking him to grope me was a matter of an entirely different dimension.
Was I insane? I was hardly going to make that proposal first. If I did, Ethan would seriously start believing I was some sex-starved wreck desperate for a man.
I was standing there hugging my throbbing chest and agonizing over pointless nonsense the moment I dismounted, which was why Ethan began peering anxiously at my expression and ventured a careful question.
"…Uh, Lilith?"
"Yes, Master Ethan."
"…Are you, by any chance, angry?"
"Pardon?"
"I was wondering if you were upset because I… kept touching your chest during the ride…."
Good grief, this boy is still tiptoeing around this.
As I'd told him before we set out, I had no reason whatsoever to be angry over a bit of contact like that.
Getting one's chest touched mid-ride was something I should have accepted as a given the moment I suggested we share a horse.
Granted, I hadn't anticipated it happening quite so often.
…And for the record, I didn't think I'd ridden the horse that roughly.
"No. As I said before we departed the Blackwood estate, it doesn't bother me at all, Master Ethan."
"…Really?"
"Yes. And you weren't doing it deliberately, were you? It was just an unavoidable accident that comes with riding."
"I-I gue…ss so…."
"Of course, if in some hypothetical universe you had taken advantage of my defenseless body to sate your lecherous personal appetites, then naturally I would have despised you for it, Master Ethan."
"Uh, uhm…?!"
"I don't care for cowards who commit sexual assault by seizing on a woman when she cannot move or resist, using her weakness to satisfy their own desires. But since I know full well that you are not that kind of person, Master Ethan, of course I believe you when you say your hands simply ended up there by accident."
"………."
"Now then — where is the forge in Grainstone Village that you mentioned, Master Ethan? As I recall, you visited last year with Master Harold, but this would be my first time here…."
"Ah, yeah…. Follow me this way…."
"……?"
Ethan, wearing a strangely deflated expression, walked ahead of me and led the way through the village.
I'm trash…. Trash who seized on Lilith's weakness just to satisfy my own desires….
Following Ethan as he timidly muttered some unintelligible monologue under his breath, Zeraon and I entered the village proper.
…I really can't tell why Ethan's emotions keep flipping back and forth like this today.
The mood of Grainstone Village, which Ethan and I had just entered, was somehow… off.
I couldn't say exactly what was wrong, but the whole place felt faintly gloomy, as if some essential spark of life had drained out of it.
For one thing, even though it was still the middle of the day, there didn't seem to be many people out and about, and the few souls who did cross our path wore faces unmistakably tinged with fatigue.
Dark circles under their eyes, no less — exactly like Ethan on one of his sleepless mornings.
Come to think of it — could that be why Ethan went so glum the moment we arrived?
Even the livestock didn't look much livelier; even the neighborhood dogs had a curiously worn-out, exhausted air about them.
Hiihiing….
"…Zeraon?"
For some reason, Zeraon — the horse whose reins I was leading — began slowing his pace almost as soon as we entered this village, too.
The fact that even an outsider and an outsider's horse like Ethan and Zeraon were affected suggested that something was fundamentally wrong with the village itself… but still.
Ethan walked on through the village under that damp, deflated atmosphere — like stepping into a town populated entirely by grad students — when I, sensing something suspicious, quietly called out to him from behind.
"Master Ethan."
All I ever wanted was for Lilith to see me as a man…. And I go and do something this trashy….
"Master Ethan!"
"Ah — uhn?! Li, Lilith?!"
"There is something I would like to discuss with you. Might I borrow your ear for a moment?"
"S-Something to discuss?! R-Right now?!"
"…? Yes."
Was it really worth that much shock just to hear that I had something to say?
I couldn't tell why, but Ethan suddenly seemed to be afraid of whatever I might say to him, and for a moment I found myself puzzled.
Still, I couldn't just gloss over this oddly unsettling atmosphere in the village, so I went ahead and shared my impressions with him.
I-I'm sorry, Lilith…! The truth is, back on the horse earlier….
Something about this village seems strange, does it not, Master Ethan?
……Huh?
Pardon?
What was that? I could swear Ethan just said something that really didn't need to be said.
A-Ah, the, the village? The village is strange?
Master Ethan, could you explain what you meant by that apology just now….
…Yeah, it's definitely strange. Everyone in the village looks drained of vitality somehow. It's not just the people, either — the animals are the same.
……Yes, that's so.
As his exclusive maid, I could hardly cut him off a third time for the sake of steering the conversation elsewhere.
So I wiped the question clean out of my mind and continued our quiet conversation at close range with Ethan.
By any chance — when you visited with Master Harold last year, was the village like this?
…No. It wasn't like this back then. It was livelier, and the people were full of energy.
Then this atmosphere….
Hearing you say it, Lilith, and looking around… yeah, it definitely does feel a bit off. I have no idea what the cause could be, though….
Well — the people of a small village like this, unaffiliated with any particular territory, were almost always bright and warm-hearted by nature.
Unlike a city, where you could get everything you needed without ever learning your next-door neighbor's name, in a small village like this one, securing the resources you needed meant getting to know absolutely everyone.
Which was exactly why the current mood of Grainstone Village felt, no matter how I looked at it, far too alien.
With the question still lingering between Ethan and me, we made our way toward the forge said to be run by a half-dwarf.
Let's start with the forge, Lilith. The reason we came here today is to get your daggers fitted.
Understood.
Even if something has gone wrong with the village, let's get your daggers made at the forge first, then look into it afterward.
"Yes, Master Ethan."
Well, honestly, whatever the village's mood might be, once my daggers were fitted I really wouldn't much care either way.
Why the residents and animals of this village couldn't shake that strange fatigue from their faces.
Why Ethan and Zeraon, who'd come in from outside, were being affected by it.
And above all, why I, unlike Ethan and Zeraon, wasn't losing any energy at all — the village was a walking pile of questions from every angle.
But frankly speaking, my own personal career advancement — namely, a gear upgrade — came before all of that. And besides, solving mysterious problems like this was the Hero's job, wasn't it?
Not something a mere maid like me should be taking an interest in.
…That was exactly what I was thinking, right up until a short while ago.
Right up until, at the half-dwarf's forge Ethan and I had come to visit, I heard that my blades could not be sharpened.